The Difficulties With Combating Hate Speech

• Sanjana Vinjamuri, Psychology, West Chester University

• Jennifer Lambe, Communication, University of Delaware
• Morgan Ellithorpe, Communication, University of Delaware

In this literature review, the research will examine the definition of hate speech, the amount of hate speech experienced in the world, and the steps to combating that hatred. The research will look at different legal policies, internal content moderation and representation–how companies internally fix hate speech and how companies like to represent themselves in media–as well as other educational studies, advocacy groups, and specific situation such as a hateful speech made at a university. The articles were found through a ping system which was used through gmail. The researchers created a gmail account that had notifications turned on for every time an article that had the words ‘hate speech’ written in the title was published. They would then do further research after reading through these articles about the specific event or law before transferring it to an Excel sheet and putting it into the correct categories. This review argues that not only are laws incapable of helping fight crimes of hate speech, but that the government as a whole cannot fix hate speech. The argument will be made that limiting the amount of hate speech can only be done through the people, and that if society wishes to see a safer world, there needs to be work done on all sides to make that possible.